How to stop being a workaholic as a leader

I’m a workaholic. I want to stop. I want to spend more time with family and friends. My work even allows that now. Why can’t I stop?

Just do it.

That’s been the prevailing advice. It’s been his own advice to himself too.

He’s not reporting stress or overwhelm but rather a sense that living good or ok is preventing him from living great.

From what I’ve seen, if you want a successful start up it pays to find some people who have made it through the first 2-3 years in the intense environment of law firms or big consultancies, you know the people.

They are organised, structured, focussed, hardworking, skilful communicators. Often though they struggle turning it off.

If they are enticed away from consulting it’s often by the desire for an exciting new challenge as well as a bit more work life balance.

What they discover often surprises them.

Just balancing their time doesn’t balance their nervous system. They are still pulled to work even when the work isn’t there.

It wasn’t the presence of the work that drove the drive to work. The presence of the work merely hid the fact they felt a constant drive to produce.

Is that so bad?

Perhaps not. But if you can’t turn it off. If you can’t relax with loved ones, you find yourself in need of alcohol or cardiovascular exercise to find peace and it’s causing consequences you don’t want then it’s a problem. That’s up to the individual to diagnose really. Only you can decide that good in the enemy of great in your life.

Our nervous system is pretty amazing. It drives us to live out our perception of ourselves in the world. Sometimes unfortunately we have some stuff lingering around from childhood, a story that tells us that love is the reward for producing. For being a good girl or boy.

We know on a rational level that that’s not true but our self perception knows otherwise.

This doesn’t need to be there for the desire to produce to be there of course but if that desire for praise and production doesn’t ever switch off then an unskillful belief is still running the show.

That doesn’t mean that you need to dig around in your childhood. It does mean that it might pay to look closely at your mental map of the world.

Is your drive for results always on?

or a better question, what is that costing you?